One often-misunderstood idea in evolutionary theory is survival of the fittest. Most think this refers to a single "best" option being selected. Often an alternate process -- dubbed balancing selection -- occurs in which several variants, each with unique advantages and disadvantages, are preserved.

The textbook example of balancing selection is sickle cell anemia. People born with the special hemoglobin variant suffer a variety of symptoms including poorer endurance, but the mutation grants immunity to malaria, a nasty disease that infects more than 200 million people worldwide a year. For that reason both sickle cell and healthy hemoglobin genes have been preserved to "keep mankind's options open", so to speak.

Professor Przeworski describes, "When we looked for genetic clues pointing to other, more ancient, examples of balancing selection, we found strong evidence for at least six such regions and weaker evidence for another 119 -- many more than we expected. We don't yet know what their functions are. [Clues point to their use in pathogen defense] but which pathogens, what immune processes, we don't know."

The six regions do not code for protein sequences. Protein coding sequences make up only a small part of the overall genome, which is largely composed of regulatory and preservationist sequences.

The team looked at the genomes of 59 humans from sub-Saharan Africa and 10 chimpanzees from Western Africa. The results give clues about how evolution helped both chimps and humans keep up with the fight against pathogens, a natural "arms race" in which both species often face similar classes of enemies.

Study first author Ellen Leffler, a graduate researcher says the fact that the set of "options" are preserved in both the humans and chimpanzees shows that they play an important role and are not purely random. She comments, "[The genes] must have been functionally important over evolutionary time."

The researchers used special codes to sort clusters of gene varieties and map how the human gene variety compared to that of their primate relatives.

Researchers say the finding of similar clusters of genes is very important as such preserved genetic variety is "extremely rare". One example of such a mechanism examined in previous studies is the major histocompatibility complex (MHC), a critical part of the immune system that helps distinguish between different kinds of pathogens. In a 2012 study Professor Przewski's team showed that humans and gibbons share the same ABO-blood type varieties.

I was talking to a liberal the other day and told him I don't believe in evolution. He seems pretty upset. I went on to explain the if the Bible is correct, then I have no concerns about the future. I also told him that if the Bible is wrong, then I still don't any concerns. This pretty much got to hot stop boiling. He just couldn't figure me out. So I told in a friendly way that being a believer puts my life and future into the hands who has never made and mistakes. If I put my life and future into liberalism I can see the results of future right now.

You see a world where your choices are liberalism or extreme Christian brainwashing (by extreme I dont mean normal Christians that know evolution happened, I mean the really ignorant ones that think the Earth is 7000 years old and that every single scientist on Earth is a liar)? Well that's half the problem right there... That's 2 incredibly narrow paths, and I am not sure what liberalism even has to do with this subject. You need to diversify your mind to be a BIT more dynamic. Read some science articles, maybe go back to school and get a better education. One that doesn't start 7000 years ago, because by then the world was already 4.5 billion years old.

A. The dinosaur's lived 65 million years ago; orB. God stuck fake fossils in the ground for a laugh.

I prefer A. It's easy to forget that if you believe God has even the slightest impact on the Universe then you must also acknowledge that not using your God-given intelligence to apply simple logic and reason makes you a fool.

"Its just Satan, trying to fool us... Just like when he stuck all those dinosaur bones in the ground for us to find" -Stephen Colbert

But seriously, its fine to have faith, its fine to beleive in God, and even that God created the universe... But if you ignore facts and think that God created it 7000 years ago, that isnt faith, its blind stupidity and pure ignorance. No God I ever read about would want that for his followers.

That is ridiculous. The two aren't related. There are Christian liberals and there are conservative atheists. There are probably more Christian conservatives than liberals but it's not a rule, and they arent the boogeyman.

I dont even know what to say to that. You are so lost you will never see reason. Funny, so much hate and blame and an "us vs. them" mentality for a person that claims to be a Christian. Arent you supposed to be more accepting like Jesus?

You should REALLY do some thinking about this quote.

"I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ."- Mahatma Gandhi

Is it not even the slightest bit possible that God created this universe and this world through the Big Bang and evolution? That perhaps when he spoke his Word to the writers of Genesis he explained things in a way that a man with limited scientific understanding could comprehend? I mean seriously, how do you tell a man who doesn't know what toilet paper is and can't count past 100 that he world is 4 Billion years old.

I believe the book of Genesis is an allegory to creation and not a literal description and it doesn't discount my faith whatsoever to believe that.

As a christain open to science I feel compelled to share that the notion that the earth is 7000 years old is deriived from couunting up all the dates in the bible and is quite absurd to myself. there is a theory that mistranslation may have been responsible for the discrepency. In hebrew day can also mean period of time. So its possible that the creation story took place over astronomical time scales but was writtren down as days to make it more grand. hard to say. but at any rate heing a strong christain believer and believing in the common scientific time scale for the earth are not mutually exclusive. infact some christains believe in evoluttion with select divine intervention to bring about the modern world. I tend to be in that camp

quote: As a christain open to science I feel compelled to share that the notion that the earth is 7000 years old is deriived from couunting up all the dates in the bible and is quite absurd to myself.

To me, as a Christian, it may well be the date of 4004 BC is wrong, but I don't think it is excessively wrong, i.e. the earth may have been created in 5000BC, but not 10,000 years or more ago.There are lots of facts that are presented by Evolutionists that have been filtered by their Evolutionary bias, so it is very common to not get the full story.One of the most major events in world history is what science calls "mass extinction events", and which Creationists call "the Noah's Ark flood". Notice something odd about this? This hugely catastrophic flood, which covered the entire planet with water, is overlooked by most Evolutionists. Why? Because the facts make it plain that Evolution isn't how we got here.

That's the thing, there's nothing in the Bible telling us how old the world/universe is. It is a derived number based off the "science" of counting dates and how old people lived via the geneology presented in the early books of the Bible.

quote: I believe the book of Genesis is an allegory to creation and not a literal description and it doesn't discount my faith whatsoever to believe that.

Did you know that it is quite normal to find Carbon 14 in oil and coal? Doesn't that at least tell you the oil and coal were made less than 65000 years ago? This is entirely consistent with what you'd expect from a literal reading of the Bible, and a contradiction to what you'd expect from the theory of Evolution.There are tons of other facts that are consistent with what you'd expect from a literal interpretation of the Bible, and that are contrary to what you'd expect from following a theory of Evolution perspective.